


Portents: Being the Fourth Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion

by LooNEY_DAC



Series: The Coin [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2018-10-05 21:36:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10317494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC





	1. I: Family Matters

The light from my small campfire brightened my little camp quite cheerily as it danced and flickered as such flames do all the world round. The tall trees surrounding me grew so thickly together that the forest floor normally got about as much light as the Carlsbad Caverns, but that was how I liked it. It was like being in a world of my own, where I could close my eyes, lean back, and slowly let all the turmoil of the outer world go and just breathe free of the burdens I had no clue as to how to carry. Besides, it also reminded me of the woods I’d wandered through in the Realm, though less dangerous, being only a matter of rods from Uncle Fixit’s place, and without sporks.

All too soon, however, I heard Uncle Fixit calling me from the house, thanks to his cunningly wired intercom system. Carefully dousing the fire, I went back to the secret tunnel that I’d made to the secret spot in the woods and carted myself back to the basement and thence to my room for the nonce so that I could divest myself of the various woodsy paraphernalia I’d used and all the inevitable and varied souvenirs I’d picked up in the course of my excursion.

I had been sent to visit Uncle Fixit while my Dad went to deal with all the legal problems that happened when you inherited the family “fortune” and that inheritance consisted of, essentially, a quite large expanse of bare and muddy hillside where several houses used to be, and several completely trashed houses now parked atop other people’s houses below. The stark suddenness of it was what was really shocking; it was hard to realize that all those people who’d riddled away all day and all night with such verve and vivacity were just… gone.

For his own part, Uncle Fixit declined to comment on the sad cause of my unexpected visit, aside from a few disgruntled remarks on the unexpectedness (read: inconvenience) of it. Even so, we got along pretty well, by and large. Certainly, we got along better than he did with his sisters; they were always nagging at him for something or other, usually mystifying us both. Whenever I bemoaned my only child status, I pictured Uncle Fixit and the aunts bickering, and I immediately felt better.

I think Uncle Fixit was terribly disappointed when he realized that I’d never be a Fixit like him, but whenever I asked what seemed to me to be a perfectly reasonable question about one or another of his machines, he perked up quite a bit. Apparently, I was like a Watson to his Holmes: the simple guy whose questions spark genius in the other’s mind. Hip, hip, hooray for me.

Be that as it may, even the best of friends need some alone time now and again, and so it had happened that I’d been cut loose to roam where I might on the estate for most of the day, which was fine by me. I could hear my little campsite calling me, and I was in the mood to listen, and linger in its beckoning and secluded shelter, for as long as I could.

“Hey, Cowpoke,” Uncle Fixit greeted me as I came out of my room. “Ready for some chuck wagon grub after a hard day’s roundup?” His lack of concern for where I’d been reflected his attitude: he figured (more or less correctly) that I’d tell him anything important, and if it wasn’t important, why bother about it? I tried not to abuse his trust too often, knowing that such would be the easiest way to destroy it.

“I reckon so; I surely do,” I drawled in reply. I liked going along with whatever absurdity Uncle Fixit had flying through his head at the moment; it helped encourage more absurdities on those lines. Of course, my aunts all felt exactly the opposite, which was yet another reason I consistently got along better with Uncle Fixit than they did. We definitely shared a love of absurdities the others mostly lacked, though there had been a few, a very, very few times when one or another of my aunts had made a mildly absurd comment—immediately attributing it to Uncle Fixit’s bad influence, of course.

“Well, get yourself gussied up and head on off to the mess. Oh, before you do, though, I need you to rassle me up something out of the Garage.” He briefly described what he wanted me to find and retrieve for him, adding at the end, “Don’t be too long about getting it, though, or the victuals’ll get plumb frozen.”

With a quick, “OK, Pard,” to Uncle Fixit, I was off on my way to the Garage, wondering what weird new experience awaited me there…

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. II: The Seeing Machine

Well, this was definitely not what I’d expected to find in the Garage.

I’d been a bit disappointed to find the part Uncle Fixit had asked me to fetch for him without any incident, but as soon as I’d taken it off of the shelf, the shelves around me had begun to move, shifting unpredictably until I was boxed in and facing one of the biggest of the Big Exotic Machines that the Garage held, to my knowledge. OK, this was more like it. Not what I’d expected, but still more what I’d expected, if you know what I mean.

The gargantuan Big Exotic Machine slowly rattled to life, wheels turning, lights and tubes flashing, and even toots of steam puffing from a little pipe on one side as it unfolded before my eyes. Many years before this, I had been to this tiny little town in Washington State where I’d seen a clock tower from Germany or Switzerland—my parents had cheerfully bickered over which it was—that had unfurled in a very similar manner, but where the tower had had carved wooden figures marching back and forth, the Big Exotic Machine brought forth arrays of lights, dials, cooling fins that glowed with the heat they were trying to dissipate, and picture tubes displaying squiggly lines (which Uncle Fixit told me later were oscilloscope displays) in an ever more impressive kaleidoscope of colors and shapes.

Finally, a panel in the main mass slid back, revealing the largest picture tube I’d ever seen, while small arrays of speakers rose into position all around me. I was now encased in the strangest theater in which I’d ever been, and I could only wonder why. 

With a flicker, a black-and-white image slowly faded into view on the screen. “Greetings, Young Protector,” the First Protector said solemnly. “This message has been recorded for you to instruct you in the operation of the engine that you are currently within. It is a Visualization Engine, built especially for you, that you may have some measure of forewarning of the trials to come, and that thus you may be enabled to triumph over them.”

This did not sound encouraging. Of course, very few things the First Protector had ever told me were really encouraging. Before I could be silly enough to ask questions of a recording, the First Protector went on.

“What you are about to see is a view from outside of time, pared back so that it might not drive you mad, as has happened with others who arrogantly tried to wrest the secrets of their own destinies from the future.” With that, the image of the First Protector faded, replaced by a full-color muddle. All the time he’d been speaking, the controls, gages and sub-screens had gone inert. Now, they flared back to life furiously.

Just in case I’d thought the “drive you mad” bit was pure hyperbole (or an arrogant deprecation of my mental stability), what flickered on to the big, primary screen confirmed it was not. This main picture swerved and twisted as though the camera was mounted on the front car of a roller coaster, which only added to the confused aspect of the images flipping across the screen, which, of course, I shall now attempt to describe in my clumsy way.

It was... Well, the closest thing I can think of to compare it to is looking at dozens, or perhaps hundreds of moving, colored transparencies piled on top of each other: sometimes, you could see something happening with incredible clarity through the confusing murk, but then the viewpoint shifted to conceal what you had been looking at while revealing something else, and their linkage through everything else.

After a few moments of this, the First Protector spoke again. “Now, to operate this Engine, manipulate the controls thus: Adjust the primary knobs—the large grey ones just before you—back and forth until the prime trace steadies on the screen immediately to the left of the main viewer, then switch in the bandpass filters—the toggles with orange lights beneath them. That should block out everything except the viewing line with which you’re attempting to synchronize.”

As I clumsily followed these instructions, the images before me began to clear…

TO BE CONTINUED


	3. III: Alpha Centauri

I could see what looked like the biggest stampede of horses that I’d ever seen, but they all had riders who should have kept them from running wild like that— Except the riders weren’t riders, but the human parts of what the creatures actually were: centaurs. I was watching a whole herd of honest-to-goodness centaurs just running for joy across the plains.

Soon enough, though, the joyful carousing turned to grimly purposeful charging. I zoomed out a bit and saw that the whole herd was running pell-mell towards a much smaller group of armored figures who were each much smaller than the centaurs themselves. This opposing group was running towards the centaurs as well, and as they closed in on each other, I instinctively braced myself against their impact.

It was over in a very few seconds. There were many more centaurs than their opponents, by far enough that even though the centaurs lost one of their own for each opponent they trampled, the herd was still only barely depleted at the end. Not a very efficient way to win a battle, but certainly the battle was won by the centaurs, and quickly. I wondered to myself how they’d handle sieges and such.

After the first view, the screen shifted to what was obviously a victory celebration, with all the mightiest heroes of the battle being paraded through the herd. Said parade led into a rite, which blurred into a ritual, and then another ritual, followed immediately by a rite, and then another rite, and I think you get the idea by now.

The rites and rituals went on for what seemed like hours, but the centaurs seemed ever more at ease as they droned on and on and on interminably. Call occasioned response, which engendered call again in one long fantastic cycle of semi-monotonous chant.

Eventually, I noticed that not all of the centaurs were still in the congregation. They had, in fact, dropped out of the aggregated mass, left the main area for a few minutes at a time, and then taken up positions on the fringes of the assembly. It took me a while longer to catch the signs that one of them was preparing to do this, and a bit of fancy finger work to zoom in on that one in particular, but I managed it.

I watched until the centaur in question had completed excusing himself and gone to a water trough for a drink before dialing around some more. This time, I landed on one of the big, big bigwigs, a one-eyed guy who seemed more and more important the longer I watched him.

One thing that kept me from getting what was going on for quite some time was the fact that the centaurs all spoke in the thickest Southern drawls I’d ever heard, and this one-eyed high muckety-muck had about the thickest of them all. Eventually, though, I made out more and more of what they were saying as my ears adjusted to their way of speaking.

So, yeah. I was watching a bunch of centaurs with a one-eyed leader who spoke in cadence with thick Southern drawls. Sadly enough, it made more sense than the sporks, on the face of it.

“Victory goes to those who seize it.” Well, I made that last out clearly enough, and it and the battle I’d witnessed told me all I needed to know about these guys. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to suffer through another round of those call-and-response rituals that told me nothing about these guys.

Apparently, the Big Exotic Machine agreed, as the image immediately broke up into the chaos of the general image. Sighing, I fiddled with the knobs until the image cleared once more…

TO BE CONTINUED


	4. IV: A Giant Tutorial

Well, when the picture cleared up again, I could see what looked like a bunch of guys in really weird patchwork clothes. They were standing around and casually talking about nothing in particular, but even so, it was pretty obvious which of them was the Chief. He wasn’t the biggest, the gravest, the most jocular, the shortest, the meanest-looking, or anything like that; he was the one they all deferred to. A few moments after I drew this conclusion, one of the others addressed him as “Chief”.

As they were talking, the view panned down to a weird little dollhouse at their feet; a moment later, an ant came out of the dollhouse and shouted something up at the Chief. This was when I realized that I was watching GIANTS. [A Note from the Translators: The preceding word took up its own page in the notebook. Our presses currently have no typeface big enough to represent this correctly.]

Seriously, by the relative sizes, I estimated these guys were maybe a thousand feet tall. Now, how they maintained a form that was even remotely human at that scale was beyond me. You see, because a material’s strength increases with the square of its size, but the weight increases by the cube of its size, the bigger something is, the stronger the materials it’s made of have to be, or it’ll collapse. This is called the “Square-Cube Law”, and is yet another way reality has of crushing your childish flights of fancy, curse it.

Anyway, these giants were apparently unaware that they were a physical impossibility, and went about their business regardless. Whatever the ant had told them wasn’t particularly welcome news, so a couple of them went and stepped on the dollhouse. Rather petty for giants, these fellows.

Having crushed the dollhouse, they walked on, coming to a place where there was a sharp drop and then a beach. Their gloomy mood was completely reversed once they reached the water, and in a moment, they were hip deep in the ocean, playing in the water like oversized boys.

Whatever these giants were made of was obviously less dense than water, as several of them were floating on their backs lazily; others, not content with that idle pastime, were paddling back and forth in gargantuan laps around their floating fellows.

It was then that the orca pod attacked. The largest of the orcas was maybe a foot long compared to these guys, but they still managed to do some fierce damage to their prey before the giants managed to leave the treacherously peaceful waters, now tinged red from their wounds.

None of the giants were killed in the attack; nevertheless, none escaped unbloodied. A couple of them looked like they wanted to charge back into the waters and show the orcas the consequences of trying to nibble on giants, but the Chief restrained them, though not looking so sanguine about it himself.

It only took a few minutes for most of the giants to regain a facade of their previous cheer, but even I could tell that for quite a few of them, it was only a surface cheer. This was demonstrated pretty clearly when the group finally left the beach; one of the last giants to leave climbed to the top of a nearby rise, grabbed a good-sized boulder, and flung it at the lurking orcas. While he missed them completely, he still seemed satisfied with having vented his spleen (as my aunts would have phrased it) on the pod.

So far, this all made for much more interesting viewing than the interminable rites-and-rituals of the centaurs had been, so when the screen collapsed into that tangled blur of overlapping vistas, it was a bit disappointing, until the screen cleared again…

TO BE CONTINUED


	5. Subterraneous Rex

The picture slowly cleared again, showing me… an empty room, which was a bit anticlimactic. I mean, watching massive herds of centaurs (no matter how stultifying their rituals) and the misadventures of giants tend to build expectations in one’s mind. Of course, Uncle Fixit once told me, “Expectations only exist to be broken”. He didn’t take it too kindly when I asked him if that included his expectations of being paid for his Big Exotic Machines.

Well, expectations aside, this looked like a really nice throne room; in fact, it seemed almost like someone had picked out everything I liked best about throne rooms and mashed it into this one. I’d had a similar feeling about the Royal Castle of the Realm upon first viewing it, so the feeling wasn’t too much of a surprise. Hopefully, I wouldn’t be about to witness to any more battles or atrocities in this rather peaceful-seeming place.

The view shifted slightly, turning to what were obviously the main doors to the throne room. A moment later, the doors opened without any visible openers, allowing a soft and vaguely familiar chant to enter. Now, the monks at the school I attended were extremely fond of plainsong, as they called it, so I’m fairly well versed in the various forms, styles and patterns of chanting; but while the chant was familiar, I couldn’t quite place it, which was disturbing, considering my near-eidetic memory.

Without warning, the palm of my left hand began to itch and throb. I glanced down at it, but there was no mark or anything to explain the sudden pain. I tried various massages et al, but nothing worked until I drew the knuckles of my right hand more-or-less vertically down from between my middle fingers to the dip in the heel of my hand just above the wrist and back up again. (Note to self: look up the proper medical names for these things after writing this down.)

Now that the irritation was subsiding, I looked back at the screen, which had remained steady on the throne room, though moving to focus on what looked like an altar-stone in a special alcove with a beam of light falling from the ceiling that made a spotlight effect right in the center of the stone. The chant slowly gained in volume as the spotlight slowly grew brighter.

As the chant rose, a single bunny hopped in through the doors. Its fur was so white as to nearly be glowing, but its eyes weren’t those of an albino. Without a pause, the bunny hopped over to the altar-stone, leaping up to center itself in the spotlight, even as a group of white-robed men entered the throne room after it, singing the chant in reverential tones.

So, this was all really starting to look disturbingly like a sacrifice, but if it was, why was the bunny just, y’know, sitting there? My palm started itching and throbbing again as I watched; I was upset enough that I more-or-less ignored the resumed discomfort, at least consciously. I’ve seen animals being slaughtered rather more times than I’d like; this was different in some fundamental way that was too deep for me to describe correctly. I mean, you never see an animal calmly go to its own death, but this bunny seemed to be doing just that.

The weirdest part was how the men actually looked like they didn’t _want_ to complete the sacrifice; it was like this particular bunny _meant_ something to them personally. I swear I saw tears on the face of the man wielding the knife once the deed was done. My palm was fine now, but my vision had suddenly blurred; reaching up, I found that I had started to cry myself, which is actually rather unusual for me. Maybe my time as a bunny had rendered me more empathetic to this one’s fate than I might otherwise have been.

The screen broke up into the massive blurry whirl again; I fiddled with the controls until it cleared, revealing…

TO BE CONTINUED


	6. The Scowrers and the Wyrm

“Strength Is All.”

The incredibly harsh voice which uttered the motto would have knocked me back on my heels had I not been clutching at the controls. As it was, I had to do some fancy finger work to get the screen back into some semblance of sanity, though I soon wished that I hadn’t.

I was looking at an assemblage of yurts connected by a labyrinth of fabric. Everything about the camp was designed and engineered in such a way as to maximize both mobility and (paradoxically) defensibility. Either the camp could hold its own against an attack, or it could vanish before the enemy reached it.

This was the only hint of admiration I was to feel for the entire time that I watched the camp and its denizens, whom I dubbed “the Scowrers”, after the villainous secret society Sherlock Holmes tried to thwart in _The Valley of Fear._

All the males I could see were covered in scars; some were more randomly placed and obviously from combat, but as I watched at least three separate and quite ceremonial brandings took place.

A band of youths rode into the camp, laden with plunder from a raid they’d successfully pursued. The loot, however, wasn’t what the boy were keenest to display: one by one, each approached the biggest, meanest-looking man of the bunch on the throne where he sat and brought forth pieces of those they had killed. As the big guy signaled his approval, a pretty girl (or two, or even three in one instance) stepped forth and led the braggart off to… well, I think you can guess.

Not all of the girls went willingly; I won’t describe what happened, but they went in the end, save for a very few who really meant that they would rather die, and so they died.

In another part of the camp, a twisted old crone was looking a bunch of girls up and down with hideous intensity. A few times, one of the girls failed to meet whatever standard the crone was holding them against, and was summarily executed by the tattooed, painted and masked but definitely female attendants.

Some of the youths who had returned had been wounded; the most grievously hurt from these were killed, unless their fellows showed that the fallen had killed a sufficient number of the enemy to warrant attempting to keep him alive. The less grievously hurt had to insist that they were fine or be similarly struck down.

The bodies in all these cases were flung into the fire that raged in what was obviously the Holy Yurt; a number of women of middle age actually leapt into the fire at one point.

Wow. These guys had literally no redeeming features that I could see. In fact, every new scene brought a new reason to despise them even more.

“Strength Is All.”

With that, the scene shifted to the lair of a dragon. Now, the camp I’d been watching had had a number of dragon and snake motifs that bore a striking resemblance to the live dragon that came up on the screen, but that wasn’t what preyed on my mind when I beheld it. No, what disturbed me the most about the dragon was the sort of deja vu it stirred in the back of my mind.

What was it about that dragon that seemed so… familiar? Whatever it was, it delighted in dancing just past the reach of my mind as I strained after it.

“So, there you sit; the Young Protector, all un-fallen and utterly above it all.”

I started, as the voice was not that of the First Protector, but that of the Magician! I looked around the various screens for any sign of him, but most just kept showing the weird and shifting patterns they’d displayed all along.

The harsh voice crackled through the speakers again. “I suppose you consider yourself untouchable, there amidst all that Machinery, and that’s why they didn’t bother to give you the Medallion. It was a mistake on their part, and now I’ll show you why.”

I felt myself being pulled towards the main screen…

TO BE CONTINUED


	7. By Sea and by Tree

I was being dragged inexorably towards the main screen, the Magician’s voice cackling hideously in my ears. Now, I wasn’t sure what would happen if I hit the screen, but I was absolutely sure that I didn’t want to find out, so I tried to grab at whatever was closest to me; it didn’t work, as my rather sweaty fingers kept slipping off of whatever I grabbed at.

“Helllllllllllllllllllllllllllllp!” I yelled, hoping Uncle Fixit would hear me and intervene in time. Instead…

“Begone, creature of evil! By the body and the blood; by the wellspring of living water; and by the freedom the truth has given unto us, you and your filth are forbidden this place, and the boy is free!”

It’s kind of a cliche to say it, but I honestly almost hurt myself when I fell back; that was how quickly the pull released me. “Thank you,” I told the First Protector, for it had been his voice speaking the words that sent the Magician packing.

“Remember my formula, for thus may you obtain victory over the Enemy when you come under assault.” The First Protector’s tone was suitably grave, but held no remonstrance, for which I was relieved and grateful; I felt somewhat abashed for having fallen under attack so easily, though the feeling made no sense. “Be at peace, and view on, for our time is dwindling.”

I presumed the First Protector meant that I wouldn’t be held here in the Giant Viewer for much longer (not that I had tried to leave or would have left if allowed, but I was still stuck here until released). Regardless, I put my suddenly much drier hands back on the controls and fiddled until the main screen finally cleared to show me… the sea.

A vast flat expanse of water filled the screen, little ripples glinting in the light. I could practically smell the salt air as I watched a formation of seagulls pass across the screen. Though it made for a wonderfully relaxing view after my scare of a moment before, I wasn’t sure why I should be watching the sea until I finally caught sight of the ship.

It was a long-ship the Vikings would have screamed with envy over—but it was only a skiff from the main craft. That main ship was simply the oddest-looking watercraft I’d ever seen.

It looked like a pyramid sitting atop the water, which even such a landlubber as I am knew was somehow wrong. Smoke rose from the apex, which told me that it was a steamship of some sort, but I couldn’t see the paddlewheels that usually adorned a steamship’s sides or stern; perhaps this one was advanced enough that it used screws, then?

Whatever else, it seemed I have a long sea voyage in my future; fortunately, I don’t get seasick. I wonder how it’ll come about?

The screen shifted, following the long-ship as it headed to a richly verdant coast land. A group of burly men who looked rather guilty filed down the gangplank and headed inland; the screen followed them.

After a few moments of this, the scene accelerated until the men became mere blurs. As I watched, they built a town, and in the central park, a Tree began to sprout, swiftly growing into a duplicate of the archway that led back to the Chamber of the Tree on the edge of the Realm. I knew somehow that this was a Gate in embryo, and that when it became active, passing through it would bring one back to the Realm.

At last the Tree reached its full growth, blossoming into the same rich magnificence that I remembered, and the Gate opened in a magnificent display of pyrotechnics.

The picture finally began to wobble and slowly broke up, so I wiggled the controls back and forth again, wondering what I’d see when next it cleared…

TO BE CONTINUED


	8. The Last Glimpse

Well, the image on the screen was undoubtedly that of the Throne Room of the Royal Castle in the Realm, crowded with royals and assorted courtiers, but no one I knew was present. Certainly I had never seen the man on the Throne, nor the Lady on her Throne. I could see no sign of a contemporary Protector, either. None of the Throne Room throng looked bored, unhappy or otherwise dissatisfied to be there, though.

The Throne Room itself was looking pretty spiffy; I figured there must be some really big thing going on, what with that and all the people present, but the sound hadn’t come in yet, so I was stuck trying to figure out what was happening just from the pictures.

OK, so the Heir Apparent was officially coming before the King of the Realm to be honored in some way, shape, manner or form, but I just couldn’t suss out precisely why. I mean, being close kin to the king tended to get you set up for all sorts of honors and such (mostly ceremonial or otherwise meaningless), but this looked like the Heir had actually accomplished something; I just couldn’t get what that something had been.

The King threw his head back and laughed, as did the Heir Apparent and most of the other Royals present, and there was something about the way they did so that sent a shiver of recognition down my spine.

Wait. Who were these people, anyway? I mean, aside from “Royalty of the Realm”; these people meant something to me in some way I was missing somehow. There was something about them that was just so—familiar, though not in the same ominous way that the dragon had been familiar. What was it, and who were they?

“Alas,” the voice of the First Protector spoke again, startling me out of the reverie my intense study of the images playing out before me had sunk me into, “it is time for this session of foreknowledge to conclude. You have seen what you need to see, Young Protector; be on watch for when you will need to apply the insights you have gained from what you have observed, for it will come to pass that you will need to do so. And now, farewell.”

All around me, the great Visualization Engine folded back up into itself, its many components sliding back into the shadowed recesses whence they had emerged as the shelves rearranged themselves back into the way they’d been when this all started, which frankly felt like it had been years ago. I was left standing in the middle of a clear space among the crowded shelves and various odd but inert Big Exotic Machines that filled the Garage, a single orange-yellow light falling on me from a fixture somewhere high above me.

The part Uncle Fixit had sent me to retrieve was in my hand, and I could see the way back into the main house, so I scampered back the way I had come, still wondering over what I had witnessed. Almost immediately, though, I had another thing over which to wonder: by the great clock in the hall, I had only been in the Garage for five to ten minutes, which Uncle Fixit confirmed. “Time does weird things when you’re not watching the clock,” he opined when I told him that it had felt far longer.

I wondered then and still wonder what it all means, but I won’t know until what I saw catches up to me in my trips to the Realm. So, it’s watch and wait until then.

THUS ENDS

Portents

Being the Fourth Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion

THE STORY CONTINUES WITH

Wandering

Being the Fifth Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion


End file.
